What Are You Currently Reading? 2013

[davidbfpo]

Ganulv asked:

Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

Simpson refers to:

11,000 French Union able-bodied and wounded being captured, approximately 3,300 were returned.

The possible factors that caused their motivation is mentioned, multi-faceted yes and now too late to research properly. No doubt other examples in military history exist.

[jmm99]

After the war, Pierre Langlais ("Gars Pierre"; CO of the 2nd Airborne Brigade at DBP) carried on a 2-year battle with the French Army to award parachutist badges to the surviving "first jumpers" into DBP, despite their (obvious) lack of regulation airborne training jumps, etc. Bureaucratic indifference to combat courage won out (as is usually the case).

On DBP (the "pi$$pot" battle): Bernard Fall, Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu; Jules Roy, The Battle of Dienbienphu; and Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam. Windrow's is the latest academic work - and very comprehensive. Fall and Roy were there at the time.

Background (Franco-American viewpoint): both by Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle In Indochina; and The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (essential and cheap).

Regards

Mike

Chants Des Appelés.Le Gars Pierre (YouTube)